“The partly excavated skeleton was at first suspected to be a large horse or cattle. But one look at the cervical vertebrae, the lower jaw and the metacarpal bones immediately revealed that this was a camel,” said Dr Galik, who is the first author of the paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Camel bones have been found in Europe dating back to the Roman period. Isolated bones or incomplete skeletons are known from Mauerbach near Vienna as well as from Serbia and Belgium. But a complete camel skeleton is unique for Central Europe.

Dr Galik and his colleagues from Austria performed extensive anatomical and morphometrical analyses and showed that the Tulln camel was male and a hybrid: its mother was a dromedary (Camelus dromedarius), and its father a Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus).